AIR FORCE PERSPECTIVE

Bud Biteman – Letter to Ted Barker (Korean War Project)

October 06, 1999

I, too, had several phone calls from concerned individuals, and referred most of those with internet capability to check out my "White Robes" article on your website. Feel free to copy and quote me to any you choose.

By way of further explanation concerning our Fighter operations out of Taegu during that same brief period, I was assigned as Intelligence Officer for the 12^th Fighter Squadron…at that time, we were the only F-51 unit at K-2, so in addition to personally flying combat missions in the entire Seoul to Taejon to Waegwan to Masan area; I was also tasked to interrogate every one of our pilots returning from their missions to the same areas when I wasn’t flying.

Never once did I hear ANY MENTION of those pilots having been directed (by Mosquito Control or any other Control) to attack the ever-increasing stream of refugees. Nor did any mention having made such an attack on their own, without specific authorization. We had more than enough military targets throughout the area … we couldn’t waste our limited ammunition on unarmed personnel!

That is not to say that we did not attack legitimate targets … vehicles or reported enemy positions in what probably seemed to be CLOSE PROXIMITY to the cluttered roads being shared both by our retreating forces, and by the streaming of refugees. Six fifty calibers firing at low altitude within a half-mile distance would sound as if they were aimed right at the listener … Such an attack against refugees MAY have happened, but I was in a good position to have heard about it, and I never did.